It’s a noble aim. People who cannot use the internet are at a huge disadvantage when it comes to acquiring knowledge and skills. Some countries, such as France and Greece, have formally declared internet access to be a basic human right.

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But asking how people will get online – be it via drones or high-altitude balloons, as Google’s Project Loon aims to do – may not be as important as asking how they can make the most of the internet once they are online.

“Providing access isn’t everything,” says Ken Banks, a software developer in Cambridge, UK, who builds mobile products to suit the needs of users in the developing world. “Clearly, anyone building any kind of service there needs to understand their end user, economically and socially. Quite often people charge ahead and build things that simply don’t work because they haven’t taken the time to do this.”

One problem is whether users can take advantage of online commerce, given that in many parts of Africa, for example, people are unlikely to have a credit card, let alone a PayPal account or Bitcoin stash. In Kenya and Tanzania, a mobile payment system called M-Pesa has filled the gap. It allows people to store and exchange money using just their cellphones. However, most websites don’t allow you to pay with M-Pesa and are unaware of its very existence.

Later this month, the World Wide Web Consortium will hold a workshop in Paris, France, to explore the issue. The goal is to find efficient and secure ways to make online payment available in the developing world.

“You can open the world of online commerce to these hundreds of millions of people in Africa, who have a way to pay online but cannot use it to access the merchant sites that exist,” says Stéphane Boyera, an information technology consultant and one of the workshop’s organisers.

Millions of people in Africa have a way to pay but cannot use it to access the merchant sites that exist

In short, high-flying projects aren’t going to lift millions of people out of poverty without addressing the challenges that apply to them particularly. Only by involving local people can start-ups and innovation hubs build products that will ultimately make connectivity meaningful.

Kurtis Heimerl, a graduate student who works on technology for the developing world at the University of California, Berkeley, agrees. His team has built low-cost cellular towers in places like rural Papua New Guinea, and makes a point of holding community meetings to hear locals’ thoughts and ideas before proceeding. “You need to know the community you’re building for before you can build things for the community,” he says.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Internet from on high”